there is always a financial elite with advantages.
I agree to an extent. It'll be hard to find a society without no inequality.
I would say we should be judging societies primarily on social mobility, property rights, and freedom of expression, etc. No point trying to better your life if everything can be taken from you out of a whim.
I disagree about the one party system, you basically just have a mafia running the country. A multi-party system, for all its flaws at least keep each other in check, since they tend to undermine each other and fight over voters.
China: One Party System, check. No term limits, check.
What else can they take?
even ultra communist soviet union was unequal, there where the directors, and the state officials that where the rich of the society.
Honestly except small villages and old tributes, I don't think you will find an example of a true Democracy.
For many people when a country is not a dictatorship or a a monarchy... Then it's a democracy.
Or maybe we need to define the word "democracy " to start on the same level
in my opinion monarchies are fundamentally not different to dictatorships, except for their theistic character
I think it depends on which kind of monarchies. In England it's not a dictatorship (or a meritocracy if some of you prefer) like in China but it is a monarchy on the paper ...
In Europe a lot of monarchies are just "democracies" with a King or a Queen.